脚色:官员职司、履历与民间常用语

A New Research on Jiaose:from Functions and Resumes in Official Documents to a Folk Vocabulary

脚色一词最早在唐代就已经出现了,最早的脚色是指某种具体的职司,后用于指记载官员过往职位信息的档案,与官员考核密切相关。一直到明代中期以前,脚色都是用来指官员履历或记载官员个人信息的文书。明代中后期以后,民间大量使用脚色一词表示普通民众的身份或底细。宋代以来的以色或以脚称演员在明代中后期终于合流,作为戏曲术语的脚色一词由此出现。在以上两种背景之下,原来用于表示官员身份、职位信息的脚色则被履历、根脚取而代之。

Jiaose first appeared during the Tang Dynasty, and refers to some specific functions of an official. It later took on the meaning of an archive that kept information about previous jobs of officials, and was associated with the evaluations of officials. Until the mid-Ming Dynasty, jiaose had often been used to refer to the resumes or personal information of the officials. Since the late Ming Dynasty, the word jiaose has been used extensively to indicate the identities of the ordinary people. During the Song Dynasty, the compound word jiaose instead of jiao or se began to be used as a theatrical term referring to an actor. For the above two reasons, words like ＂resume＂ or ＂background＂ took the original meaning of jiaose to refer to the identity and position of an official.